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You can’t see me, but I’m smiling. Yes, despite the fact that I was going to sleep late (well, until 8:00) this morning. Despite the fact that Dexter the Kitty ran across my face to wake me up, then started chewing on my glasses. Despite those things, it’s going to be a good day, I can feel it.

Yesterday was a good day. The days this week keep getting better and better…and thus, I bring you Update #4 in this Oktoberzest Project.

At about 2:00pm yesterday, I started to worry. I’d tried – twice – to sit at my computer and write, but twice I ended up checking email and reading blogs and doing other such fun stuff. I gave in at lunch and decided to indulge in a little Top Chef while eating my leftover sloppy joes.

But then…conviction set in. I loaded up my laptop, grabbed my binder full of story-notes, and headed to Barnes & Noble. I walked around the store, looking at all the paper-and-ink proof that this whole thing could be done.

Row by row, I checked out author names, book titles, cover art, letting myself get carried away with how cool it would be to see my hard work packaged and condensed into something pretty you could hold in your hand. I looked at my plain black binder and thought, “All of this info? This, right here? Could be right there. Sitting on the shelf, between the Ns and the Ps, which is only a few letters away from the R of Rowling, you know.”

I found a wide black table and planted myself there, telling myself if I wrote 2,000 words I could reward myself and buy a magazine.

It would have been easy to leave after 789 words, which was better than my Day 1 total. This was also about the time my battery icon turned red, and there wasn’t a plug anywhere around. But, no.

It also would have been easy to leave after 1527 words, when my sweet husband had been home for an hour and was ready to eat dinner. However, I prepared a turkey-artichoke stuffed pasta dish a while back, and it was just waiting to be pulled from the freezer – so I stayed.

I did not reach 2000 words, and I did not buy my magazine.

These, however, were both choices. I pushed myself to 1917, then made the decision to stop there, at the end of the chapter. It felt good to stay when it would have been easy to leave, and I’m happy with this number. This chapter was totally new, and for all the planning I’ve done, I did not see it coming in the least. That’s such fun, especially when new ideas fit so seamlessly with everything else. The events of this scene brought a necessary cohesion to some original ideas, as well as new depth to the characters and their conflicts.

Who knows what can happen today? I’m ready to find out. Oh yeah, and about the magazine, I just decided not to spend $4.99 on it. I guess it was rewarding enough to accomplish that much last night.

PS: I didn’t know what moxie meant until this morning, when I saw it in a Survivor recap, of all things. It means “force of character, determination, or nerve.” I think it’s funny that the sentence example in my dictionary says, When you’ve got moxie, you need the clothes to match. For some strange reason, that makes me imagine most Angelina Jolie characters. I guess I could wear a Lara Croft Tomb Raider outfit while I write my novel, but I’m pretty sure no one wants to see that. And, it would be a little cold for October.

Sometimes writing for me is that way too, as in eventually I am ready to sit down and just do it. And sometimes that other stuff feels almost necessary, as if I’m removing obstacles so the words can flow. BTW, I have leftover sloppy joes in my fridge too!